SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2003
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–15]
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: OPERATIONS AND RECONSTRUCTION
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 2, 2003
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eighth Congress
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
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CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' MCKEON, California
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
ED SCHROCK, Virginia
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JEFF MILLER, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire
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ROB BISHOP, Utah
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
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JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
TIM RYAN, Ohio
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
James M. Lariviere, Professional Staff Member
Justin Bernier, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
HEARING:
Thursday, October 2, 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom: Lessons Learned
APPENDIX:
Thursday, October 2, 2003
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2003
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: LESSONS LEARNED
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Giambastiani, Adm. Edmund P., Jr., Commander, United States Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (NATO); accompanied by Brig. Gen. Robert Cone
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Giambastiani, Adm. Edmund P., Jr.
Hunter, Hon. Duncan
Skelton, Hon. Ike
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. Taylor
Mr. Cooper
Mr. Meek
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: LESSONS LEARNED
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, October 2, 2003.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the committee) presiding.
The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. I want to welcome Admiral Giambastiani, Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), to the committee this morning.
A submariner by profession, the admiral is one of our most forward-thinking military officers. And, Admiral, we worked on lots of programs together, and it's good to be with you, and thanks for all of your talents and what you bring to this discussion. So we are fortunate to have you today. We are going to discuss lessons the military is learning from our recent experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
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There is a popular saying, that generals always prepare to refight the last war. U.S. Joint Forces Command is charged with making sure that we are experimenting with new ways of winning the next war. In accomplishing that mission, the command paid close attention to the conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom in order to thoroughly assess the war's implications for future defense policies and programs.
To its credit, the Defense Department put the process in motion before the first bombs fell. They knew that some things would go well, some things would go poorly. That is the nature of war. The Secretary moved to make sure that we captured all of those lessons in real time as objectively as possible.
JFCOM embedded teams of analysts with the forces doing the fighting in order to bridge the gap between the real world experience of troops on the ground and the abstract, theoretical concepts of scholars working from an ivory tower. We didn't do that in Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, or Kosovo.
The Department's approach signified a remarkable openness to self-assessment and recognized that criticism of OIF needed to be based a realistic assessment of the facts on the ground, not on the impressions created by reporters who are paid to make headlines, talking heads who are paid to talk, whether they know anything or not, or critics with their own axes to grind.
I think that is a lesson worth remembering as we review the ongoing war on terror. The admiral and his team had an opportunity to brief some of us in a classified setting. But it is important that JFCOM's efforts reach a wider audience so that we are better able to assess and incorporate the lessons and nonlessons of Operation Iraqi Freedom in our congressional responsibilities. Should it prove necessary to meet in closed session, the committee will move to Room 2212, which has been prepared for that possibility.
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Admiral, we all look forward to your testimony, and appreciate your appearance before the committee this afternoon. And also, Brigadier General Cone, we welcome you, as well. And thank you for being with us today.
And now let me recognize Dr. Snyder—excuse me, Mr. Taylor, the gentleman from Missouri, who is the ranking Democrat at the committee hearing, for any remarks that he might want to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to read, with your permission, a statement by Congressman Skelton.
The CHAIRMAN. Absolutely.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
''I would like to join you in thanking Admiral Giambastiani for being with us today. The admiral provided an excellent classified briefing for a small group of Members several weeks ago. I am glad that he is here to share his findings in an open forum.
''A recent trip to Iraq confirmed to me what we already knew: That the heart of this critical, recent operation is the amazing American soldier. Each solder, sailor, airman and marine, are operating more jointly in this conflict than ever before, enabling the United States to achieve a stunning military victory.
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''These great troops are currently serving as valiantly to try to win the peace. The military victory in Operation Iraqi Freedom is a testament to the efforts of those who fought for the Goldwater/Nichols legislation, and to many officers who understand how much joint operations enhance our military capability on the battlefield and have worked to implement the law.
''It is also a testament to the quality of the education and training system of the American military, from our basic schools through the war colleges.
''Mr. Chairman, the effort the admiral and his team have completed, and which brings him here today, is a critical one. The American military systematic efforts to review its successes and its failures from planing to execution at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of warfare allow it to remain the finest fighting force in the world.
''Joint Forces Command's analytical approach to Operation Iraqi Freedom was a unique one, and it is clear that we will have a wealth of operational data and insights to consider in making decisions about the future of warfighting.
''But, Mr. Chairman, lessons learned at the strategic level are critical, as well. I won't recount Lord Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' as I did to Secretary Wolfowitz last week, but it is clear to me that there were blunders in our postwar planning.
''The success of the future of American operations will rely as heavily on our ability to learn from strategic blunders as from our mistakes on the battlefield. I look forward to future opportunities to examine those lessons learned as well as those we will hear about today. Admiral, I look forward to your testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.''
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. Well, I want to thank the gentleman from Mississippi. And that was a great rendition of Ike Skelton's positions. And, Ike, thank you for coming in. I know that this—we impinged on something that is very traditional, which is the congressional prayer breakfast, and we apologize for that. But that is the timing we are faced with this time of year.
Admiral, once again, thanks for your great work. You have done a lot of stuff with respect to undersea warfare that we have been very impressed with. You have got a new set of challenges here. And we did have a very good session in closed session. The floor is yours, sir.
STATEMENT OF ADM. EDMUND P. GIAMBASTIANI, JR., COMMANDER, UNITED STATES JOINT FORCES COMMAND AND SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER TRANSFORMATION (NATO); ACCOMPANIED BY: BRIADIER GENERAL ROBERT CONE
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee.
If I may, Mr. Chairman, rather than reading my longer written statement, I would like to submit it for the record and provide you with a summary version.
The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. Without objection.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, sir.
What follows, Mr. Chairman, is a Joint Forces Command assessment of capabilities that worked well in Iraq at the operational warfighting level, to emphasize the point you made earlier. And what I am going to talk about is those capabilities that require greater improvement, those that measured up and performed well, and, finally, those that did not measure up to our expectations.
But, before I proceed, I would like to first describe what this review is not. It is not a systems analysis or an assessment report. In other words, I am not going to provide you with how many aircraft we need or should buy or what particular weapons platform worked better than another.
This is also not a performance assessment of the services' tactical operations. Our focus, again, was at the joint level of warfighting. Mr. Chairman, we took this mission on with a clear understanding that its success required a ruthless objectivity. For these reasons, our standards to measure the effectiveness of our forces were exacting and unsparing.
This is the only way, in our judgment, to guard against the greatest shortcomings of our profession, as you have described, the victor's disease. This affliction arises from overconfidence and complacency borne from previous military victories. One symptom of this disease is that militaries will focus on improving their warfighting capabilities to fight the last war, as you indicated, instead of anticipating and adapting for the future, which might be wholly different, requiring new capabilities and clearly changed methods.
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I might mention that the two greatest transformational events in my career, and I have told this committee before, were the creation of the all-volunteer force, and the passage of the Goldwater/Nichols Act, both of which were externally imposed on the military and the Department of Defense (DOD). What we are attempting today is to change from within, with the help of Congress, and in some ways that is a greater challenge.
We all know that elite forces, like our Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, plus our Special Operating Forces, remain dominant because they have high standards and they enforce those standards. Our forces are elite because they are unsparing in their self-analysis of the way they conduct business. This mentality of what I call ruthless objectivity shaped our assessment of operational lessons learned for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Such an attitude is a legacy of our military tradition to examine ourselves critically in all of our endeavors. Given these ground rules, there is no question but that a remarkable shift has occurred in the way the joint forces operate today. This shift is what I call a new joint way of war and leverages on four key dimensions of the modern battle space: knowledge, speed, precision, and lethality.
Let me provide just two quick examples. In Desert Storm, we had 30 operational detachment teams of special forces. I am not a special forces commander, but working in separate missions from the conventional force, totally separate missions from our conventional forces. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, by comparison, we deployed over 100 of these operational detachment teams. And they were closely wedded to our conventional forces, and in many cases merging the capabilities of both ground and air forces.
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The net result is that we not only had precision munitions launched from the air and ground, but also precision decisions to direct our smart weapons, by the combination of both special and conventional forces working jointly with all of our Armed Forces.
These are the elements that make up what we call overmatching power. Based on these new dimensions, we organized our report into three competitive categories, as I described. The first category is what we call clear winners, and reached new levels of performance. They follow our joint integration and adaptive planning, capabilities that worked very well.
Our forces operated at a new level of jointness forged through continuous operations. There is no doubt that Operation Southern Watch and Northern Watch in Iraq, and over Iraq, as well as Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, greatly aided in improving our operational confidence in the use of command and control.
This high level of joint readiness enabled General Franks and the Central Command to eliminate many of the gaps and seams that were typical of ad hoc joint task forces.
The next category were capabilities that enabled—the next one was capabilities that enabled joint force synergy. This is another way of describing how coherently these teams operated together. And, finally, under that first category of what really went real, is the reemphasis of the point I just made on our integration of conventional and Special Operations Forces. So there were three levels that we considered to be working exceptionally well.
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In the second category, we identified capabilities that demonstrated considerable effectiveness but need improvement. These were urban operations, information operations throughout the battle space, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. So we had another level here that were good, but they would be what I would describe as 60/40. Okay, 60 to the good, 40 to the bad; we need some substantial improvement here.
And then, finally in the area of capabilities that fell short of our expectations where we needed substantial improvement, in our view, fratricide prevention is the first the one I list. Although data that we have analyzed would indicate that we had improvement in fratricide, our efforts for fratricide prevention required continuous rigorous investigation and improvement in the future. Even one death due to fratricide is too many.
Deployment, planning and execution is the second one I would formally list right here, right now. We could not provide the flexibility and adaptation demanded by late changes in planning assumptions or other modifications. We weren't able to respond. We had the lift, the mettle, but our process did not allow us to work here. We are spending great effort in this area.
And, finally, reserve mobilization and deployment is the third area under this not-so-good category. We didn't do well by our reserves in many cases, because we gave them short notice. The challenge here is establishing the right Reserve to Active Component force mix. For example, we probably do not have the right mix of early deploying combat service and service support. In other words, those enabling force support units and high-demand, low-density units that are in the reserves.
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Mr. Chairman, I look forward to discussing these issues with the members of the committee here in open session.
There is one final matter, however, that I must bring to your attention. We found that a fundamental building mechanic at the joint force capabilities rests in our command and control infrastructure.
This is often presented in our budget documents, unfortunately, as information technologies. But they are far from that. They are central to modern warfare. And part of that group of listings that I gave you at the top on planning and adaptation, our ability to have joint force synergy directly, are centered around our ability to collaborate.
I cannot overemphasis, I can't emphasize enough our investment in those initiatives such as the deployable joint command and control system, and the standing joint force headquarters prototypes, how important they are to our future of joint warfighting.
These two capabilities build on our warfighting dominance today to ensure that it continues well into the future. Mr. Chairman, we are very grateful for your support and that of this committee on our command and control initiatives. And we look forward to sharing our progress in the months ahead. Let me close by saying that in assembling these lessons learned, we have witnessed firsthand our most important product, the quality of our men and women in uniform.
I can tell you that every member of our team came away impressed, awed even by the troops' service, devotion and resolve. We were uplifted by their morale, confidence and good cheer, their courage under fire, in the context of our commitment to produce as penetrating and balanced an account as humanly possible.
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I can also report to you that support, as well as that of the Congress and the American people, has borne fruit in this best-trained, best-equipped and best-led joint force I have seen in my professional career. I consider it a privilege to serve with these young men and women at this critical time in our Nation.
Thank you for your allowing me this oral statement. I look forward to your questions and that of the committee, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much Admiral.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Giambastiani can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. General Cone, did you have a statement?
General CONE. No, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you for being with us today, gentlemen. We had a good session in closed session.
I will reserve my questions until we get to the end, and turn to the gentleman who really has been a—has emphasized joint operations for many years. That is the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.
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Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, if I may, in deference to time, I will reserve my questions, like you, if I may, for a few moments later.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, General, thank you for being with us this morning. We appreciate your being here and sharing your thoughts with us on the pluses and minuses of the most recent military action.
Admiral, you mentioned—forgive me if I don't characterize this exactly right—but in listing some things that you thought we may have been able to do better, you mentioned information, intelligence and surveillance.
And I guess most any military commander that completes an action would always say, we didn't have enough intelligence. Because you can always use more information. In this case, it appears that—I was waiting to see if you would mention intelligence and information gathering, because I think this is a really great point that we need to concentrate on, or at least it seems to me, as an outsider looking in, it is.
It seems to me that the information gathering apparatus that we have grew up during the Cold War. And it seems to me that the information that we needed to gather was a whole lot different back then than it is now. And I am not sure how much of a transition we have made between our capabilities that existed up until, let's say, 1990, 1991, and the type of information gathering that is necessary today to be able to identify bad guys, who they are and where they are.
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Could you just talk on that point for a minute? Where do you think we are in that transition? And what do we need to do in order to be more capable with regard to those issues?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I would be happy to address that, sir. And if I could take just a moment, I forgot to officially tell you that the general sitting next to me is a brand new Army brigadier, who is the head of my joint lessons learned team. He spent most of his time embedded in Iraq, which is why he is with me here today for this lessons learned effort.
With regard to intelligence, what I would tell you is that when we look at it from an operational level, what we mean by that is from the combatant commander and the joint task force commander's level, we have been able to transition our intelligence gathering reasonably well to, in fact, be able to give us force dispositions, for example, before we start operations. We know how to do that and we do that reasonably well.
In other words, where forces are, what we think we are being opposed by, what their capabilities are, and also a static assessment of their readiness conditions. We do that, frankly, pretty well.
Where we fall short is when we are in a high-speed, fast-moving campaign like this one was, where our forces are moving very rapidly, the ability to be able to do effects assessments or battle damage in a rapid fashion lags seriously behind the movement of our forces. So our ability to assess what effects we are having on the battlefield as we move to a certain area, as we attack things, is not as good as it used to be. What we would like to describe that battle damage assessment is an older term. For example, it is a component of this intelligence gathering.
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And we don't do this as well as we would like, because we can't keep up with the rapidity of our movement. It is later than we would like. So we have to use things like armed reconnaissance. You have to have armed reconnaissance units. We do have a good idea, and, of course, commanders feel here in the reports that he does get from his tactical intelligence units make a significant difference. But the bottom line is, is that it is difficult to keep up with the immediate intelligence operationally on the battlefield.
So I would talk to you from that level of command. I hope that is helpful.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Let me just ask this. I guess we never know where the next war we are going to fight is. And, therefore, it is kind of hard to know what our enemy is going to look like. But we know now that we are not finished with the war on terrorism and that we are facing a rather unique set of foes.
Could you give us an idea of the kinds of capabilities that you would like to see us have that perhaps are not up to where you would like to see them?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. What I would say to you is that, first of all, there is a series of capabilities that we need to improve on. One is our ability to collaborate at a high level. We have done well, but we need to do much better.
Now, this isn't a specific aircraft system or something else that I can give you. But what it is is to allow our commanders and their component staffs and their battlefield commanders to operate with voice, video, and data in a real-time way to exchange information as they pick it up, so that rapid information is able to be exchanged, turned into knowledge, so that our commanders can act on that information. That is very, very key. So that is an area that I think is extremely significant.
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Another area where we need to improve our capability is in bringing our ability to exercise jointly at a high level all of the way down through the tactical level with our forces around the United States. And let me give you some examples. This is what we call our initiative, the joint national training capability. Typically, we only can operate at this high level of jointness when we are actually in a fight. And we don't like to have to operate at this level in a fight; we would rather practice it.
So we use a sequence of simulations. One of them would be a war game. But we would like to be able to use actual movement of forces. We would like to take the National Training Center, for example. We would like to take Top Gun. We would like to use Red Flag. We would like to use Eglin Air Force Base. I can go to all of these different ranges around the country, and we would like to be able to net them in a way where our joint task force commanders can exercise control over and command of forces that are operating, frankly doing unit-level and service functions, but put them together in a way that allows them to train jointly. But we do it both live, virtually, and what we call in a constructive fashion, so that we can tie them together. That is a capability that is exceptionally important.
Another capability that is very important for us to introduce is our ability to do mission rehearsals. Let me give you an example. In preparation for potential combat operations, Joint Forces Command supported General Franks and his Central Command staff in conducting mission rehearsals in Qatar, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia. We actually moved forward about 200 what we call observer trainers at the joint level, and sent them and embedded them throughout General Franks' command and all of his components, with six retired, three- and four-star officers as senior mentors in addition to my active duty team.
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And what we did is, we conducted two mission rehearsals in December and one in February. Now, the reason why I am bringing this up to you is what you didn't see and what General Franks' people didn't see is that in Suffolk, Virginia, my Joint Warfighting Center, I had 500 support people in a joint exercise control group conducting simulation, inserting changes in battle problems, fixing things.
Well, that is a pretty manpower-intensive operation. And the necessity of having simulation software to allow me not to have that much manpower to exercise at this level of warfare is exceptionally important. Those are a couple of examples. I can give you probably seven or eight more right now. But those are a couple of big ones. If you would like, I would be happy to go on.
Mr. SAXTON. Sir, thank you very much. My time has long since expired. But I would really like to have a longer conversation with you on these issues. I was going to ask you about special forces and the role they played, and how they did, but we will save that for another time.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. And I would now recognize the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I think Dr. Snyder was actually here at the gavel.
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The CHAIRMAN. I think Dr. Snyder just deferred to you.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, General. Thank you, Admiral. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, I want to take exception with one thing you said, and that was that you don't learn from the previous wars. I think you actually are not giving yourself credit. In the previous Gulf War, there was an enormous problem with the destruction of oil wells and the environmental problems and the health problems that resulted from that.
Quite frankly, the American military did an excellent job of preventing that from happening this time. In the previous Gulf War, we had a heck of problem with Scud missiles. Again, because of the actions that you took, to a very large extent we prevented that this time. So again, these are two lessons learned from previous conflicts. And I do want to offer that as a compliment, because I don't find your branch of the service saying that enough.
To that end, though, there is obviously something the Iraqis have learned and seem to be getting better at by the day, and that is improvised explosive devices. I am concerned that a nation that can find $10 billion to spend on national missile defense this year, on a problem that probably will exist in the future, is expending such a pitifully small amount of money toward the problem that exists today and is probably going to result in the life of a young American today, just like it did a few days ago.
I would really encourage you to take whatever steps are necessary to see to it that in this supplemental appropriation, that whatever resources are necessary to solve that problem. I am told that on my recent trip to Iraq, that the convoy that I traveled in was afforded a certain level of protection from those devices, without getting into details.
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Quite frankly, I am going to have a bit of trouble explaining to the widow of Sergeant Jones and Wiggins of Mississippi or wherever, that we couldn't find the resources to protect his Humvee. You can do it for the big shots like myself, that go to Baghdad; we ought to be doing it for every vehicle. And I have been given the briefing on how many vehicles are the target number to protect. I find that woefully inadequate.
Second thing, I think, is a lesson learned. And again I don't pretend to be an expert, but I hopefully listen to the experts. I met with a young Marine lance corporal from a neighboring State, who had lost a leg in the war. He was telling me that he felt one of the reasons why his vehicle was singled out was a lack of camouflage, that it was painted green, amongst a convey of vehicles that were painted to match the desert.
I am not in a position to say whether he is right or wrong. But in his mind, that was the problem. I realize that the paints do a heck of a lot more than just camouflage the vehicle, that they are there for chemical protection and other things. But I've got to believe that a Nation with the resources the United States has, can find—I understand that some of our prepositioned ships are green—the vehicles inside—some of them were desert color. I understand that.
But there has got to be a way for a quick changeover as we move from theatre to theater. And again, if it is a matter of resources, then this committee needs to know that, because this is where the resources start.
I wish you would comment on those two things. But I am particularly concerned with the Internet and the ability to transmit information quickly. I am concerned that improvised explosive devices are not just a problem in Iraq, but in Afghanistan or anyplace where young Americans are going to be sent.
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I think this is a problem today, and it is only going to get worse. I would like to know what we are doing about it.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I would like to be able to answer you and give you a good solid answer so you would feel more comfortable, because I, too, am just as concerned as you would be on improvised explosive devices.
My team and I have not been studying that, if you will. So I can't—I am not prepared to answer that question for you. But I would be happy to take it for the record and go after it.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. TAYLOR. While I have got you, last point. On our trip, Congressman Skeleton, several of my Republican colleagues, we were made aware by Dr. Kay—who was, if I am not mistaken, an administration appointee. So he certainly has no political axe to grind.
We were told of 55 large weapons caches that are identified, but no one is guarding them. That story has since been released to the press, so we are certainly not talking out of school. Again, since all it takes is one of those artillery shells to become an improvised explosive device, what is being done right now to get those caches so that they do not become a source of weapons for our enemies?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. As to your last question, sir, once again I am unfamiliar. I have not looked at anything that Mr. Kay is doing. I haven't seen any reports. I am unfamiliar with this, because I am dealing with a major combat operations piece, but I will take it for the record and will get back to you on this.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I could, on the question of vehicle colors, we in fact are looking at vehicle colors and what we had in positioned stocks both ashore and at sea. And we are doing an analysis of that. I don't have the results of it, but we are physically working on it right now, for the reasons you pointed out.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Schrock.
Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Admiral and General. Thanks for being here and thanks for your comments.
When I was in Vietnam, there was a statement that we used to talk about where we said, war is hell and peace is worse. If you think about that for a moment, you realize that we did a magnificent job in 21 days, but the hard part is now and is ahead of us. And I am not so sure there are so many blunders in the postwar planning as the unknowns in this phase of the operation.
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I was in a briefing the other day with some Iraqi officials, and the former President Chalabi. And he was saying that—someone asked him how many people surround Saddam Hussein. He said, without hesitation, 2,000. And my question was, if we know for a fact there are 2,000 around him, why can't we find some of those people? It is like you can't get there from here. And they had no answer for that.
So I think for us to think for a minute that we are going to end this thing very quickly, we are fooling ourselves. It would be wonderful if we could, but I don't think that we will.
Two of the things—one of the things you commented on, Admiral, that I am real concerned about, as well, is the reserves and the National Guard. I know I have talked to the head of the National Guard in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and he is very concerned about the stress that it is putting on his folks. Some of them are over there a lot longer than they thought that they would be, and what it is doing to them financially and other ways.
I wonder how we can address that? Like my friend, Mr. Saxton, I am very interested in the Special Operations Forces (SOF), as well. A great number of them are headquartered in the district I represent. And I know there was testimony here some months ago that said we are going to need a couple of hundred thousand troops. That was disputed by the Pentagon. I was one of those who believed we needed a couple of hundred thousand more troops until I went to Iraq; I don't believe that now. And I believe more intelligence people and more Special Operations Forces, is exactly what the commanders in the field said they need.
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And I would be curious to know, too, you know, where you think the role of the SOF is going, what role they are going to have as we hopefully come to a conclusion on this thing in the next year, because that is a great concern to me.
Would you be willing to comment on that? And the Reserve and the Guard issues, as well.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, Congressman Schrock. The first thing I would do is, I would make a comment. And this goes back to Congressman Saxton's point earlier with regard to intelligence. There is one area that we are seriously deficient in, and that is human intelligence (HUMINT). I didn't mention that previously. And it is an important piece to bring up. We have what we call tactical human intelligence teams that are with certain of our units that we have deployed.
But in general, HUMINT is something that you need more of, particularly when you are operating against forces that potentially don't use the type of communications sometimes, or other ways that we can pick up externally what is happening. So, HUMINT is a very key component here. And additional HUMINT is needed in our view.
With regard to the reserves, if I could for just a second. What I would tell you is, is that in April, as a result of all of our deployments, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs tasked me to do a series of mobilization studies, because we didn't do mobilization very well in some areas. We did well in some places, we did very poorly in others, to be frank with you.
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And then subsequently in July, on the 9th of July, the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) sent a memo out, of which I had happened to be one of the addees, to in fact look at how to properly rebalance our forces within the Defense Department as we continued to sustained this Global War On Terrorism no matter where it is, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, et cetera.
And in that Reserve Component, mobilization was a major part of this. And I was assigned to work on a study group, if you will, and send a series of conclusions up in policy areas on Reserve Component mobilization. And I, in fact, have done that. And I signed a paper out yesterday morning, after about three months of study, in conjunction with Dr. Chu who is the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.
And both Dr. Chu and I are sending forward a joint set of ten recommendations on what we call quick policy wins. Now, since the Secretary of Defense has not seen this yet, it is hard for me to get into a lot of details. But I will give you a couple of examples. We were not as good as we would like to be, for example, on how we dealt with the Individual Ready Reserve. Okay. How do you make prudent and judicious use of those reserves? We looked at how we prepared Reserve Components for activation.
For example, many don't know that the reserve—for example, reserve forces under title 10 do not come under my combatant command until they are mobilized. So they are under service control until they are mobilized, and then they come under my combatant control.
Mr. SCHROCK. Mobilized or in theater?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. They always remain—when they come under my combatant command, they stay with me. After we train them and deploy them, we turn over operational control then to the forward-deployed regional combatant commander. So what happens is we have some issues with how we do that and our lack of notification of reserves, items like that. So we worked a whole series of initiatives to fix those, if you will.
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How do you backfill active forces with reserves? We have got some initiatives in that area. And what I would leave it as is how do you deal with the mobilization cap and how do you work with the services underneath that? So those are a series of areas that I will tell you.
Mr. SCHROCK. I know I have the red light. It would be interesting at some point after the Secretary has seen it for us to see that.
Let me make one other comment in a response to Mr. Saxton's comment about intelligence gathering. You made the comment, and I think I am quoting, ''not as good as it used to be.'' That comment really bothered me. Not the fact that you said it, but the fact that that situation exists. And why that we have allowed—I say ''we'' collectively, Congress—has allowed that to happen is a mystery to me. We darn well better get our act together or we are going to be in more trouble than we have been in the past. We have got to take that into consideration. Thank you both for being here.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir.
Finally, on the SOF piece, I would just say here I would really like to defer to—SOF is getting bigger and working more with conventional forces. How I would tell you it is important, there are five regional combatant commanders in the United States. All of them have a special operations command underneath them. There is one other combatant command who has a special operations command, and it is mine. The reason why that is, is because we are a joint force provider and we work on making conventional and special operations force operations together, that integration, a high priority. So that is why I have one under my command, and doing that is very important to how we operate in the future.
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That is one of the high points, as I report here. So you are going to see more Special Operations Forces-conventional force integration in the future. And you will see a lot more work in this area.
Mr. SCHROCK. That is terrific, because I am convinced the Special Operations Forces folks could be those who win the peace. Thank you.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir.
Mr. HEFLEY [presiding].
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Admiral and General, thank you for being here. Mr. Chairman, I think you and I sat in on the closed session briefing that we had a couple of weeks ago, and it got cut short because of interruptions. And my recollection is that it was about a 90-minute briefing. It may be worthwhile if we can get commitments from people somewhere down the line of having a set number of people, because it is a very extensive briefing.
It would be good to hear from beginning to end. And maybe we can curtail our enthusiasm for interrupting and get the full briefing. But I thought it was very helpful.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. We would be happy to provide that.
Dr. SNYDER. I know it is a lot of effort on their part. But if we got a commitment from eight or ten members to be there.
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Mr. HEFLEY. I think that would be a good idea, because it was a very difficult time frame we were dealing with.
Dr. SNYDER. I think if we had it from 8:00 to 9:30 or something, some morning when there wouldn't be interruptions, and get commitments from members to be there, it would be worthwhile.
I also appreciate you all being here. I notice that you are kind of in the midst of this, which I guess goes on for a long time. I note the slides you have are labeled ''draft.'' We have had quite a few discussions in the last few months on whether you can learn anything from something marked ''draft,'' but apparently you can. And we appreciate you being here.
I assume that this is an ongoing process though, that this is just a work in process for literally years—I mean months, if not years; is that a fair statement?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir, it is a very fair statement. For example, what we did is we provided a 200-plus page quick look that we worked through the draft and we are reviewing that now. And then we are working on a final report. And we have incorporated most of that 200 pages into the final report, which is going to be larger.
And General Cone over here next to me heading that team, I am going to let him talk to that, just a second, to the process. But the important point is that we have a continuous process that we have started. One of my problems with lessons learned in the past is when I came to the command, and this is no reflection on my predecessors—they had other priorities that they had to send people towards—I only had two full-time people working on joint lessons learned, one military and one contractor.
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I now have about 45 or so who are working on this. Most of them are out of hide within my command, but I think it is that important to have this real-time effort going on, where we can feed it back to the combatant commands and get it into the process, within the programing and budgeting side of the Pentagon, so that they can see where there are needs and we can respond as quickly as possible.
We also have a series of analysts, and we have partnered with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Center for Naval Analysis to provide us with some good solid analysis on specific subjects.
Bob, do you want to add anything on that?
General CONE. Sir, we started this effort back in March. We were the first to stand this up. We had about 35 folks. We have really been experimenting over time of how to best do this, how to get at—how to access the information you need, how to triangulate data, how to use interviews and backups.
But I think the most important dimension is that we are collecting this as it is happening as opposed to waiting after the fact. And, very fortunately, warfare today creates a digital footprint, if you will. For instance, key intelligence briefings can be captured, et cetera. So we have amassed, just for the major part of the operation, about 80 gigabytes of key briefings, satellite feeds, et cetera. I think that would be very helpful as we try and recreate and continue to study this.
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Our efforts are ongoing. We still have people remaining in theatre. And we are looking to expand our study now to the entire Global War On Terrorism. And, again, this is fascinating work, something we started in March. I have just been extended another year to continue working this for Joint Forces Command.
It is something that you just have a difficult time putting down. The most rewarding part of this is when you go to a combatant commander, like with U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) or with U.S. Forces Korea, and give a briefing and have a combatant commander say he is going to make changes tomorrow, based upon what you told him, to his war plan, I think that is taking lessons and making them lessons acted upon.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I might address one last thing, Dr. Snyder. We have in my Command today, in the second of a four-day period, the capstone group of flag and general officers. These are our brand new flag and generals.
Bob just finished—General Cone just finished giving this brief to them, full up lessons learned brief, just as we offered here to the House Armed Services Committee and had tremendous feedback from them. And we are trying to embed these as quickly as possible in the training. So we like to call this a dynamic interactive real-time diagnosis versus a static post-mortem.
Dr. SNYDER. I had several questions, but my time is running out. Five minutes goes by fast. You specifically mentioned Goldwater/Nichols and how important that was. Have you, or will you, as part of this process look at potential need for legislative changes to Goldwater/Nichols?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. The Secretary has asked the Chairman and other senior civilians and military to provide him with a list of changes. I have provided inputs to the Defense Department leadership on recommended changes for legislation. And those have come forward in the package that has been sent up to the Hill over this past six months.
Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Let me at this time ask my question, if I may. Admiral, you stated that your study is that of ruthless objectivity. Right?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Right.
Mr. SKELTON. You also said the purpose is to improve our warfighting capability. Is that right?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Correct, sir.
Mr. SKELTON. General Cone just said that you are collecting this as it happens. Is that right?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Correct, sir.
Mr. SKELTON. History tells us that we have had parallel guerilla warfare, because General Abizaid announced we are in guerilla warfare; one type of warfare phased into another and never really stopped. Is that correct?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I understand, and I did not hear him say that, but I read some press accounts that he talked about it in that fashion.
Mr. SKELTON. Well, from your studies, Admiral, the force on force combat phased into a guerrilla warfare. Is that correct?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Would you repeat that one again, Congressman?
Mr. SKELTON. The force on force combat, our forces against their forces, phased into what General Abizaid now calls guerrilla warfare. Is that correct?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I would say to you the way I would define this——
Mr. SKELTON. Is that correct or incorrect?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I don't know if it is correct.
Mr. SKELTON. You are aware of the various eras in history where the French were thrown out of Algeria as a result of guerilla warfare in 1962?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir.
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Mr. SKELTON. Where we faced guerilla-type warfare in Lebanon, where the Russians today are facing guerilla warfare in Chechnya, similar type of conflict has occurred in Northern Ireland, the British had guerilla warfare in Malaysia, and the British fought the Mau Maus in Kenya in the 1950s and the 1960s.
With all of that history in mind, what lessons from your study have applicability for the combat operations that are still occurring today? In other words, Admiral, what are you telling our commanders on the ground now to win this guerilla war?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. What I operate at is an operational level, operational level of lessons learned. Which means at the joint task force and combatant commander level. So what we focus on—and of course the purpose of the brief today was on major combat operations—but what we focus on at Joint Forces Command is how our units and our commands collaborate together and how they are able to take information and use it, which would be useful in both major combat operations and any other type of combat operations or lesser operations, guerilla warfare and the rest. That is what we focus on.
So my focus, my team's focus, is how to enable those commanders to exercise command and control while they are conducting an operation. And, in fact, what I would tell you is, is I have a team going over to work with Lieutenant General Sanchez. They are coming over in another week. This is the second visit they are making. And they are focusing on just that, the collaborative information environment to allow them to conduct operations in the way that they can do it, the speediest and the most precise.
Mr. SKELTON. Admiral, that is all process. What are you telling the commanders on the ground now to win the guerilla war?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I don't tell them what to do to win the guerilla war, sir.
Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Cole.
Mr. COLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that.
Admiral, I would like to pick up on the line of questioning that my colleague from Virginia raised on the Reserve units in particular. As you are trying to focus on lessons learned there, can you tell us, does that take you to any conclusions that you can share with us at this time about the mix of Active Forces that we have in two regards?
One, do we need different kinds of units in the active service that we have, given the problems we have in calling up some of units we have used quite heavily from the reserves?
And, two, to stretch it a little bit further, does any of what you are studying suggest to you we frankly need a larger military in general, that we actually need more manpower to make sure that our commanders in the field have literally all of the tools, all of the units that they need for this type of conflict?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. As a force provider, Joint Forces Command spends a significant amount of time looking at these mobilization issues. We are spending more because of all of that tasking I mentioned earlier. With regard to activations, let me give you a couple of quick examples.
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One would be that we late notify a unit, for example, and we alert them, unfortunately, at a later date. We don't give them a prior notification. That would be one example of what would happen. And, unfortunately, instead of giving them maybe 30 days of alertment period, we give them 3 or 4, 5 or 6, or some shorter period. That is not really one that is conducive to their job, their family, and the rest.
A second one would be some Reserve units and the readiness levels. If they are in a Reserve unit where we need to use them as an enabling Reserve unit—for example, I need them as a support unit to be out in theatre to receive the active forces that come behind them—we need to be able to get them out at a certain time, where we have to get them trained properly, if they are not already trained, in a certain period of time.
We had some difficulty with some of our units, because we had to alert them at such a late time, that we had to send their gear forward. The gear was in theater. We had to go use gear from another unit to train that particular unit, and then send them forward. We have to figure out how to rectify some of this.
Mr. COLE. Was this a situation where simply not enough time; there is one set of difficulties here that are clearly a great challenge to the individual Reservists or Guard and family.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Some are time, some are process.
Mr. COLE. The process is what I am interested in.
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One, I want to repeat my question, and perhaps it is not appropriate for you to answer it, but is there, from what you have seen, a suggestion that we need more of particular types of unit in the active service; this is not a process easily fixed, and we need them there? Or, two, were these Reserve units up to speed? Were they ready to do what they needed to do?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Some units have a readiness level for example, that we call in the military C–3 or C–4, that means they are not ready for deployment. C–3, C–4, C–5, that means they are not trained for deployment. So, therefore, you have to go through a training period before you can, in fact, send them forward.
You know that already. The bottom line is that some of these units that we need immediately on a short-notice base are, in fact, kept at a C–3, C–4 level.
Mr. COLE. Well, is it to suggest that this is a problem that you can deal with by simply upgrading what we are doing in the reserves, or are you going to need some of these units that we right now are basically counting on in time of need calling up? Are you going to need them in the active service, or are you going to need a larger military?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. What I will tell you is that some of the units that we have that are in these enabling units probably need to have more of those units in the Active Component.
Mr. COLE. Can you specify what types of units?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I don't have specifics. But what we have studied amongst our reserve forces policy people—these are the reserves themselves, the National Guard, our Under Secretary who is responsible in this area, the services themselves—we are looking really at things like in combat service and combat service support; we need more of those, for example.
And if we get the mix properly, we feel that a lot of this we can take care of. The other piece is, there are a huge number of policy issues we have got to fix.
Mr. COLE. Let me ask you one other question because my time is close to expiring.
Again, focusing on this same thing, and in terms of having individual units ready to go, I will relate a quick anecdote to you. I talked to one of the generals at Fort Sill, and I said, what is your big problem with the reserves? He said, I have learned more about teeth in the past two, three weeks than I ever wanted to know in a lifetime. What are the kinds of things we ought to be doing, in terms of providing benefits or things that frankly enable reservists to be in the physical condition to be immediately mobilized and deployed that we are not doing now, things that we should be doing on the back side in expanding things we make available to our Reserve soldiers.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. One of the things I found personally as I went to, for example, Army bases—Congressman Taylor had asked me this question separately—and I found out that I was looking at clinics where we had to deal with tooth problems in getting reservists ready from a dental perspective to deploy, and I found, surprisingly, many more problems in this area than I expected.
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So we made this part of the program to figure out how we can, in fact, deal with the dental end of the forces, particularly those that are high demand, low density, or those that have to be in a high readiness state, because obviously you cannot wait to get a whole series of dental problems fixed if we need these people in 48 hours if they are in that type of unit.
Mr. COLE. Thank you, Admiral. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
Mr. MCHUGH. Will the Chairman yield and may I have 30 seconds?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes.
Mr. MCHUGH. Just for the edification of everyone here, and I am sure we are all aware of it, the House authorization bill provides for preemployment Tri-Care services, dental and medical for these units, to try to address the very problem that the gentleman, Mr. Cole, asked about and the Admiral responded to, so we are trying to stay on that curve.
Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Good.
Thank you.
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Mr. Cooper.
Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Chairman and Admiral and General.
At the beginning of your testimony, you note the limitations of this report, specifically that it will not help us in our procurement decisions. I think you've done very valuable work, but to build on that, do not we need some sort of independent study that would help this committee in its procurement decisions get some DOD experts?
You know, let's have the SECDEF appoint them, but also to try to remove the service rivalry problem that I am sure you still have to face. Wouldn't that be a helpful way to help overcome some of these parochial interests?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Sir, there is a definite need for advice on how to make systems decisions and how to procure at the system level within the services and between the services. That is why I tried to give you the knots up front.
I definitely do agree with you that there is a need for that. I just wanted you to make sure that you didn't have an expectation that we were going to tell you that.
Mr. COOPER. So you would endorse some sort of independent study that would follow up?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. What I tell you is that I endorse any effort to do an analysis and assessment of these systems. Now, many of these are ongoing right now inside the Department, but as you say, some of them are going on within the services themselves and sometimes, unfortunately, when we look at ourselves, we may get an answer that may not be as—or we may get an answer we think is very pleasing to us but not to others.
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Mr. COOPER. This is a small example. It is my understanding that the Army is continuing to buy line-of-sight radio systems, and blue force tracker seems to work a whole lot better, and yet we are still seeing procurement linger on. But that is just a small parochial example.
The ultimate line of reasoning, and I am not asking you to endorse this, might be for the joint command to actually do the services so that you would eliminate the service bias that might be inherent when they do their——
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. That is the Holy Grail that I think everybody has been trying to get at. I am not sure a combatant command should do that, but I take your comment. I might also mention that on the blue force tracking piece.
We are very, very strong on the need across all services, ground forces, air forces and the rest, for two components of fratricide preventions. One of them is blue force tracking, and the other one is the associated combat identification that comes along with it.
Those two things are absolutely essential to prevent blue on blue and fratricide, and they have to be used in concert to be effective.
Mr. COOPER. I am glad you brought up from that time side again, because you have listed that as probably the number one concern.
It has recently come to my attention that no Purple Hearts are possibly awarded for victims from that time side, including, even, bomblet demolition experts whose task is to disable bomblets that we have dropped, because apparently 10 to 15 percent of these do not explode as planned. That just seems inherently unfair, because if you take a bullet in combat in service of our country, does it really matter whether it is fired by the enemy or a mistaken effort on our path?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Sir, I am unaware of the policy on this, because we haven't looked at it, but we will take it for the record for you and refer it to the right people if that is okay with you.
Mr. COOPER. That would be very helpful. I have no more questions at this time.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, several years ago, I introduced a bill to create a Joint Forces Command, because I thought it was critically important that somebody, other than the joint staff, bring together all the services around the world and also look out into the future, rather than just concentrating on the very difficult challenges of operating services day to day.
I think we are to the critical testing point, in my view, for Joint Forces Command and the lessons learned from this engagement are very important. They will have a lot to do with what sort of military we have in the future, and as you know, sometimes when you learn the wrong lessons, you sow the seeds for future defeats. And yet there are bureaucratic struggles and a lot of things that go on in fighting over what lessons to be learned.
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I guess what I want to ask is related to a comment you made that the lessons learned need to be turned into lessons acted upon. We all have lots of studies sitting on our shelves and nothing comes of them. What I am most interested in is okay, you say these are the things we have learned.
Now what? How is this going to be translated in—maybe not into action, you know, telling the commanders on the ground tactically what to do today, but in future budget requests that come before this committee, and at the appropriate level where you are making recommendations, how is that going to happen?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, Congressman Thornberry. What I would say to you is that I like to emphasize to my staff, product, product, product, which is what you are talking about here. How do we get this entered into the budget programming and the rest?
Well, one of the ways is to immediately engage for these major combat operations lessons learned with the service chiefs, the Chairman, the Vice Chairman, the Secretary, the Deputy and the other senior leadership in the Department, and we have done that repeatedly over about 84, 85—I don't know, it is just over 100 briefs.
What is it, Bob?
General CONE. We are at about 103 now.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. We are at 103, now. It goes fast and most of this has been to the folks who write for guidance. For example, the Defense Planning Guidance will have much of what we have got from this written into it; for example, that is one way to ensure that it gets directed into the program in the budgeting system.
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It is the embed part of this in the Defense Planning Guidance.
Mr. THORNBERRY. What if it goes against the culture of a particular service and is a very difficult haul?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Sir, the services, not surprisingly—if you take a look at them, the services agree with a lot of our findings. What they do not agree with, potentially, would be some of our recommendations, and that is going to happen, and that is the way we do business. But my view on that is that is why we have got a Secretary of Defense, a Deputy, a Chairman, and a Vice Chairman, to help out here.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Is there a way for your recommendations to be fed into the process, other than the Secretary himself saying do this? In other words, Secretaries come and go.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Commander, Commander in Chief (CINC)—well, whatever we are calling you now. You cannot be a CINC—come and go. How do we institutionalize this to overcome parochialism that exists in any organization?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. In October when I arrived last year, and today—I have been in Northern Command one year as of today—and when I arrived last year, I instituted a program called transformation change packages. And every time we come forward with a recommendation, we put forward to the Joint Chiefs, for example, through the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee and to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), we put in transformation change packages, because I would like to have a method and a technique of tracking what we have even put into the system and hopefully foster it through the system that they get embedded in policy changes, guidance changes, planning, programming, and budgeting. And, in fact, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pace and myself are personally tracking these issues.
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I have had two video teleconferences recently with him and two meetings with him, and he is coming down to see me in another week or so just to follow up on this very issue that you are talking about, because we are very serious at the senior level in getting these things embedded into the system.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Good. I hope so.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Wilson.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to follow up on the line of Mr. Cole, and I wanted to ask your perspectives, because you were over there in Iraq seeing what was going on in the theater, particularly with respect to the Army, but also the other services to the extent that you saw them.
Do we have, not only looking back on this operation, but looking forward to the likelihood of continued rotations, do we have the active duty end strength that we need in the military, in order to sustain these operations?
General CONE. Ma'am, that would—in terms of the things that I studied, that is not something that I would have looked at. I would view that as a larger area, and frankly——
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Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. I am not going to let you duck this one, General.
I understand it may not have been within the scope of the particular study you were looking at, but you are a smart guy, you have looked at what was going on over there and you have been around a little bit, and I really want to know what you think.
General CONE. I would prefer to restrict my comments to things that I have studied and have empirical evidence and background on, ma'am.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I can help out here, because I have got him working just specifically in operational warfighting.
As a force provider, with the force services, right now we have adequate forces, maybe not in all the areas that we need, and we are working always to resource all of these right now, under my combatant command, we have just over 80 percent conventional forces, and we are looking at how to feed full subsequent rotation of forces overseas as we always do. Some areas we have a surplus, some areas we have deficits. Some areas are in what we call high-density, low-demand outfits. Others are in areas we do not need.
For example, there is significant pressure on military police, significant pressure on civilian affairs, where we do not have large numbers of these forces, and in some cases, we do not have sufficient numbers in that area, but we do have them in other areas which we can retrain to use. So I will tell you right now, for the short term, we are fine. For the short term, I think we are fine.
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Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. General, I would like to follow up a little bit.
General CONE. Ma'am.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. I really want to know your opinion. You have got a lot more experience than most of us who are sitting up here——
General CONE. Right.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO [continuing]. On whether the Army is going to be able to sustain this over the next 18 months to 2 years without breaking the force that I suspect that you love.
General CONE. I have seen various briefings on the Army's proposal to do that.
Frankly, it is a significant strain. I think that there are alternatives, in terms of activation of enhanced brigades, et cetera, but from what I have seen, it is a very tight time line in terms of bringing folks in, and frankly, there is a significant human cost in terms of folks owing—separation from families, et cetera. So if you look at it, someone can say, is there a path ahead?
Yes, there is a path ahead for the next 18 months. Is there significant friction, and how much? If variables change, or circumstances change, it becomes extremely difficult at that point. So it is certainly not a comfortable solution, but it is a solution that I think is doable, given the current variables that we have.
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Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. With respect to the Active and Reserve Components, and looking at what you learned from this specific experience on difficulties in mobilization, not only how you smooth out the pipeline and the process to get people activated, but are there units that—looking forward, are there units that are on active duty that should be in the reference, and are there units in the reserves and Guard that should be on active duty, and what are your insights on how you would adjust that?
General CONE. I would shift, again, what I frankly observed in the buildup to this particular campaign and the difficulties that we had, particularly in logistics units and in terms of setting enabling conditions. If you have this kind of a rolling start that we had here, I mean, who is going to roll these forces forward? And so the problem was, in many cases, with some of the key logistical enablers that were in Kuwait that should have been there sort of ahead of time to project forces through.
Frankly, they came in after they were needed, so that is a particular area that I think—an area that was mentioned to me when I was there was talking about military police and standing up to military police brigade that was there. And frankly, the rear area of military police were not available in the time that they were needed.
So again, some specific examples of the problems we had to stage in country would give you a type of idea of mission occupational specialties (MOS). You have got to have the capabilities that are consistent with your plan at the time you want to execute it, and if you want to reach into the reserves, you have got to have the time lines to have them when they are needed.
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Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. The inverse of that, when there are units that are on active duty that you saw from your perspective might be able to be moved to Reserve units, and you do not need them to be as ready or as far forward.
General CONE. I saw some very creative utilization of active forces that were—for instance, the 75th Artillery Brigade served as the 75th Exploration Brigade. And again, our military men are very precise in their nature. They took these guys, they trained them to help look for weapons of mass destruction. And again, they were staged with the units and whatnot, so you could see—you could look at the structure and say, you know, we had the ability to try and—to train, retrain people on active duty for new capabilities and responsibilities. That might be, you know, an idea of the kinds of things that we might want to do in the future.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I might mention, Congresswoman, that some of those points that General Cone has made are what we tried to feed back in the answer I gave to a couple of different Congressmen here on Reserve Component mobilization and the mix of forces. We have tried to feed those directly back in to what policy recommendations we are coming in with.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Franks.
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Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, General, I know that the whole issue of fratricide has been dealt with significantly here already today, but it occurs to me that, as the methods of warfare advance, that it almost seems two competing dynamics are at play. I mean, as we become a more lethal force and as we attempt to become a more integrated force, to get the different disciplines of the different services to integrate, it seems that there is more opportunity, more mathematical, well, possibility, for friendly-fire tragedies. I know that there are very few things more bewildering and more tragic to a commander or to leaders such as yourselves than this type of an issue.
Having said that, it seems like the opposing dynamic also exists and that the very methods that we use to integrate a force might also be our greatest method to prevent fratricide. And can you tell me if, indeed, that analysis is correct and what you see in the future as ways that we cannot only integrate the force effectively, but do everything we possibly can to prevent these friendly-fire incidents, and what can we do as a committee in terms of policy to assist that effort?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you Congressman Franks.
What I would tell you is, first of all, just to emphasize a point I made earlier: Statistically, we did better in Operation Iraqi Freedom, statistically.
However, one is too many, as you have already suggested, or any is too many.
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In this particular operation, we had more ground combat days than we had, for example, during Desert Storm. So the interaction, for example, of air forces with ground forces, was substantially greater during this conflict than it was during Desert Storm. So if we look at that interaction with different forces plus interjecting Special Operations Forces into it, you had a more complex battlefield. So the good news is that we reduce these. Again, the bad news is that we had any.
If there are two things that you should do in the committee here as you look at budgets that come forward and programs from each of the services, is to scrutinize how their combat identification and blue force tracking solutions fit with the other services and jointly.
Now, we are working inside the Department, if you will, to provide more interoperability and integration here with a whole series of recommendations that are coming out of this, plus additional working groups in a combat identification evaluation team that I have at Joint Forces Command. But the bottom line is, if you focus on combat identification and blue force tracking and their integration and interoperability, you will be doing a very good thing in the committee.
Mr. FRANKS. Well, I just want to thank you both and emphasize the committee's appreciation for all that you do.
The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Davis.
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Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral, General, thank you for being here.
We have talked a lot about the Reserve and deployment, and I am wondering in that area, as well as others, the extent to which your evaluation really looks at predictability. You know, what did we know, I guess? When did we know it? Who are we listening to? Are we listening to the right people in evaluating that? To what extent does your assessment get into those issues?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Congresswoman Davis, how I would answer is as follows: First of all, if we could have a perfectly predictable world, that would be the first thing we would sign up for, so that if we knew we had to do rotations, for example, of units, we could do that very nicely. We do that in Bosnia, in Kosovo today.
As a force provider, our units who are lined up for those know a year, two years in advance when they are going to roll through those particular assignments, so it is easily predictable in that case for families, jobwise, et cetera.
When you have a contingency that arises such as this and then potentially you have to continue to roll over forces, what we are trying to do now is provide some predictability, for example, to forces that are going into Afghanistan and into Iraq, so——
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I guess what I am asking is not so much predictability to the forces but predictability in our thinking.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Right.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And how do you assess that, how do you assess that? And I guess it is maybe a somewhat rhetorical question, but it seems like it is helpful in lessons learned to do that, and I do not know whether—to what extent you actually identify that. Yes, we really knew that in advance.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Any thought on that, Bob?
I am going to let General Cone take it for a second. I can address it from a policy side because we've been trying to address some of this predictability.
General CONE. This is a key issue, and one of the reasons we included it in the report. I think we certainly captured the human dimension in talking to—every commander we interviewed at the brigade levels made comments that they wanted this in this report because they felt that this is not a good way to do business; that, in fact, we can treat people better than this; and that they want to look at systemic types of changes. So I think that is the impetus really for what we tried to document.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Could you also share with us the extent to which Operation Iraqi Freedom—I guess the 21 days, the march to Baghdad, et cetera—how that is being separated from the post-21 days? And if I look at areas like urban operations, for example, and also end strength—I mean, whether or not, you know, having additional divisions on the ground, whether we would think about that as part of the operation, as opposed to the post-operation.
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To what extent is your assessment integrating the needs that we would have during and post immediate conflict?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. In general, what I would tell you is what we are looking at, and again of course, what we are addressing today is our major combat operations period. We do have some additional folks, as I already mentioned, who are going to go over to be observer trainers and are taking the lessons learned with regard to collaborative environments to assist the Joint Task Force (JTF) commander, the current—Lieutenant General Sanchez, for example.
We are also required to provide, in some cases, the replacement JTF headquarters out of Joint Forces Command, so we get into an organized train-and-equip function with the services in that respect.
Because our Command is focused on warfighting—ergo the name of my center that does this, Joint Task Force Training is called the Joint Warfighting Center—we have not, in fact, looked at extensively post-major combat operations in the past.
Now we are getting into that area is what I would tell you, because there is obviously a desire for that and a need for that with this new lessons learned capability, so we are gathering and assessing data right now, is what I would tell you, but we are in the gathering and assessing phase right now.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. So would you say then that is part of transformation? Would that be part of some transformational thinking?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. That would be more integrated, that we would need to think about that more in the planning.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Correct. And that is why we have started to do that. And we are looking at it from the military perspective, from military operations, and, frankly, we have taken it on because we think it is an important part of what we do every day.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. But this is something we hadn't done before, Joint Forces Command. We have never done this before.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Simmons.
Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Admiral. It is always good to have a submariner at the witness table, because we love ruthless objectivity.
Now, in the spirit of ruthless objectivity, you made a comment that HUMINT is a problem, and I agree. And I will just recall briefly that in the sixties, I trained as a military intelligence officer at Fort Holabird, Maryland, and at that time, HUMINTers were trained for all military services at that location.
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When I was deployed to Vietnam in the late-sixties, there were military HUMINTers in civilian clothes, doing their thing in that war zone. I do not know, we could quibble on how effective they were, but they were doing it.
In the mid-seventies, as a consequence of the Church-Pike investigations and the disclosure that some of these military HUMINTers were observing American citizens protesting the war, that capability was essentially eliminated. And it was only in the early 1980s, in the Reagan administration, that an effort was made to reestablish that capability, a limited effort, and the training at that point was reserved to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Fort Holabird capability had been deactivated.
So, it is my assessment that this capability is weak, that it probably focuses primarily on IPW, interrogation of prisoners of war, very little paid informants, and that this is a problem, a big problem. And whether or not you can discuss it in any detail in an open forum, I think it is a problem for us as members of the Armed Services Committee. I do not think it should be relegated simply to the Intelligence Committee, because I think it has to do critically with your capability, especially now, to conduct an unconventional conflict, and I think it affects people's lives, and those people are people of whom we have jurisdiction. So I would be interested in your ruthless objectivity in addressing this issue and if you wish to reserve this for a closed session, I would hope you would express that.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Sir, in the bounds of this particular forum right now, I would tell you that, number one, HUMINT is definitely needed. I have said that already. Number two, tactical human intelligence, in fact, is a skill set that is in some of our units, and I am going to allow General Cone to talk about that for a second. But without going too far in this area, HUMINT is a very important thing to have, not only when you are in a fast-paced moving battle, but it is an important thing to have, frankly, anytime you have forces in an area. So there is a need for it, our classified report talks about it, and what I would do is just ask General Cone maybe to address the tactical human intelligence of what, potentially, some of our units have and do.
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General CONE. I think in interviews with commanders, one of the comments that is made frequently is, we are relearning the value of tactical HUMINT. We are also relearning the value of our own eyes and ears and skill sets that perhaps we hadn't trained in for a period of time. I think we probably got about 95 percent of our actionable intelligence from the human sources and, frankly, based on available tactical HUMINT teams and the degree of exposure we have, frankly what we are learning is everybody is becoming a source of HUMINT. And, as I said, that is an important skill set and it is something that takes experience. It takes a cultural background, et cetera, et cetera. But it really highlights, I think, future structural changes in terms of how we address that.
It takes several weeks to get good at this on the ground. How do we in the future ensure that we increase that capability so that we are ready to go? And I think that has to do with answers from higher levels into the integration into the tactical units.
Mr. SIMMONS. And so, it is my understanding that this is a collection of information by uniformed personnel.
General CONE. A combination. But it is my understanding we are doing a lot of it with HUMINT personnel.
Mr. SIMMONS. And that relies on intelligence of prisoners of war. But I guess what I am driving at is the folks that were previously trained to run informants and develop human source intelligence were not uniformed personnel. They often operated in civilian clothes and were able to penetrate much more deeply into the infrastructure of the country under consideration.
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It is my sense that we do not have that right now as a military capability. Is that correct or incorrect?
General CONE. That is a correct perception on the part of many of the commanders on the ground who think that they could use a lot more help from those type of resources that you are talking about.
Mr. SIMMONS. I thank the Chair. And if I could make a request for the record, I think it would be useful if we could follow up on this subject in a little more detail in a closed session.
The CHAIRMAN. That is a good idea.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Admiral and General, thank you both for your service.
I am just so proud of what you helped contribute to what I consider to be an historic military victory in Iraq and part of the war on terrorism. It has just been a tremendous, I think, morale boost to our military and tremendous effort again to the war on terrorism.
Additionally, I am impressed by your efforts on the joint lessons learned. It is not going to be, as indicated, the after action reports that—from the beginning, there is a real effort to learn about how we can better prepare for any future conflict. And I in particular am happy to have heard the comments about fratricide prevention. In my 31 years in the Army National Guard, fratricide investigations were part of my duties as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer, and I really felt—and, of course, every life is precious—I really felt that it had been well-handled in the war.
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But I do understand that our goal is none, and so I am impressed that you actually list that as a capability that fell short, because by many standards, it was as well as almost could be expected.
In regard to the planning also, I had the opportunity to visit Kuwait in the Middle East last November, again in February. I was back last month in Kuwait and then had the opportunity to visit Iraq, and I saw the advanced planning. I felt like the planning indeed has been excellent, and all the questions about planning really has disregarded the facts largely of what occurred. There are certainly surprises, but these can be addressed and they are being addressed.
In the process of lessons learned, did you identify any programs or concepts that you consider to be winners or losers, and if so, what can you tell us as to what they are and what that means for the future of joint warfighting?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, Congressman Wilson. Very much appreciate those comments.
To get to your point directly with regard to what programs are important, again because we focus on the operational joint level, I am going to respond in a joint and operational level.
The first one that I would tell you would be the joint national training capability that I spoke to earlier. That is a very key component to be able to bring all our services together and allow our joint commanders to train in a joint way. And your support of this, frankly, gives us what we call an asymmetric advantage. In fact, my staff has put together—we sat down and did a little brainstorming, and this goes to training, and the heart of it. And the way we like to describe this is training matters. Joint training matters more. It creates our asymmetric advantage and that is what we think the Joint National Training Center will do for us in netting, if you will, our existing ranges together so that we can operate in this fashion.
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Another capability to support, in my view, is a simulation capability, as I said, to allow us to work on those high-level mission rehearsals and to be able to simulate without using very large numbers of people. We had a program in the past called Joint Simulation Systems (JSIMS). Frankly, it was not executed well. We supported a decision to do an analysis of alternatives. We are in that process right now, and I would ask you to support the analysis of alternatives that turns out from that particular study.
Your support of joint concept development and experimentation is exceedingly important in my view because this allows us to practice at the wargame level, at the exercise level with our service components, and physically fund those exercises and be able to put them together in a way. For example, in May we ran our first ever joint war game with the United States Army. We have never done this before. It is a combination Joint Forces Command/Army war game. It replaced the Army transformation war game. General Shinseki and I personally sponsored the game. I think it went pretty darn well. All the reports we get from outsiders who viewed this game is that it was a significant step up from what we had done in the past.
To follow on, next week I run a similar joint Navy war game. We will be doing the same thing with the Air Force in the Spring, and we will be doing the same thing with the Marine Corps next fall. And so the chiefs of the service and myself sponsor these, and what we bring from Joint Forces Command is a joint context for the game so that we can test out various objectives. So your support of joint concept development in this area, for example, is extremely important.
We have a prototype effort called a Standing Joint Force Headquarters, and we also have a program in which the Navy is the executive agent that fully supports this effort. It is called the Deployable Joint Command and Control System, and we ask for your strong support in this, because this provides us with what we call a collaborative information environment for these joint task force headquarters to operate in.
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Those are probably a good list. I have a few more I could give you on the side, and they are all formal programs of record.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. And one final question. And that is, I am very interested in communications, and you referenced the exponential increase in bandwidth related to the comparison of the Persian Gulf conflict and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Can you describe the increase and what the complications are for the future?
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Yes, sir. The good news is we had available a lot more military and commercial bandwidth. The bad news is we had a lot more military and commercial bandwidth. And the bad side of this is we weren't able to get a lot of this bandwidth down to the lowest tactical user. We call it the last tactical mile: How you get it, if you will, to that vehicle; how you get it to that aircraft in a broad enough sense so that you can do the type of work you need.
The other thing that happens when you provide more bandwidth is sometimes you have a tendency not to conserve bandwidth in the way you have. So that is part of the bad news story. So the service chiefs, the Chairman, myself, the other combatant commanders, would tell you it was great that we had more, but we still need more to be able to get lower down into the operational organization. So that is the bad news part of it and we are working hard on that.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you very much. And I am very proud that you and I both have sons in the Navy, and thank you for what you do.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. LoBiondo.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, thank you for being here today. You have been very helpful in what you said for us to understand a little bit better what is going on.
A couple of my colleagues have touched on Guard/Reserve forces, and one of the things that happens is that every weekend each of us goes home to our districts, and very often we are with either events or with the families of those who are serving. In some cases, that is active duty. In some cases, it is Guard and Reserve. In the case of Guard and Reserve, on so many occasions now I have had the question where the families have been told that their loved ones would be expected to serve for one year, and now that is being extended because the time that they spent in some cases, months and months on active duty, before being deployed to theater are not being counted.
Now, they are all proud to serve. I think they are all supportive of what the United States is doing and understand the results. But with these families, the hardship that has created on them, I am not sure that it is understood, and we do not have good answers.
I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Wolfowitz this question, and I really didn't get any kind of a response. But when you have families coming to you and members of the family have died while their loved ones are away, children are born, and, you know, they are told one thing and then something else happens, this becomes very, very difficult to explain. And I am hoping you can give me some hope that I can share with them or shed some light on this or take it back and get back to us or something along these lines.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I cannot give you a specific answer with regard to—the Army policy I think is the one you are discussing, where it has a one-year-in-theater announcement that I believe happened back in July—with regard to what immediate relief there is.
I know General Abizaid has instituted a leave program within theater. I have read about it. I haven't talked to him specifically, and my staff is working with his to learn more about these details. But to allow people, I think, a two-week leave period, at their choosing, within mission constraints during that particular period of time. And he has already initiated that particular leave policy. That is one mitigating factor that he has tried to institute as the combatant commander who has operational control over them.
The second thing is that one of the problems that we have with regard to our reserves is that we have a multiple set of organizations that announce, and the services own many of these reserves, so they announce those policies and they may be different between services, which create some of the problems that we see.
I know that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are both focused in this area and are addressing it. But I have to take it for the record, the remainder of the question, because I cannot answer those myself.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. LOBIONDO. I thank you for that. And at the risk of being redundant, just to repeat a couple of things, I do not think there is any question that they are prepared to do their service to America. They understood what they signed up for, but they also didn't understand that they signed up for active duty.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Right.
Mr. LOBIONDO. And a year pulling away from their families, pulling away from their jobs, pulling away from their life style, is a commitment that they are prepared to make and willing to make. But when we are in some cases months and months and months, four, six, eight months being on active duty and told that doesn't count, really is difficult, so anything you can get back to me will be appreciated.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I can tell you we are looking at that from a policy side with regard to that actual period, and then when you would actually have them usable in a theater somewhere, because that is an issue we have to deal with and we are working on dealing with it.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gingrey, I think you were here before the gavel and were lost in the mix here, and I apologize, but I will call on you now.
Dr. GINGREY. Thank you. Admiral, General, I want to thank you for your testimony.
I want to get back to something you said at the very outset in your testimony, and you said one of the areas in which we are not—have not done very well or needs improvement was battle damage assessment. But then you went on and said that the battle damage assessment is not as good as it used to be, and that question was touched on a little bit earlier by one of the other members. But if you would, explain to me what you mean by that and why; I mean, you know, obviously, during the major combat phase the performance was outstanding, in regard to that part of the—of what is going on in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but what is it about a battle damage assessment that is so difficult and why is it not as good as it used to be?
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. If I said it was not as good as it used to be, then I probably didn't say it properly. I think our battle damage assessment is probably as good as it has ever been. I think what I was trying to say is that battle damage assessment is what we call an old term in an old construct. What we are looking for, frankly, at Joint Forces Command, and we are trying to get the entire military community to move in this direction, is to do effects assessments as opposed to battle damage. And I will explain that. Battle damage focuses on how many tanks did you destroy, how many aircraft did you destroy; and it works on numbers. And we are more interested in effects on the battlefield than we are in just how many things we killed or blew up or destroyed.
We are looking for what we call effects-based operations, and we think the way to assess that is in an effects-based way. So that is really what I was talking about in battle damage.
Now, the issue with battle damage that was poor is that we were not able to keep up with the pace of movement of our forces because we were moving so rapidly. If you have a much slower moving battlefield, we are able to keep up with battle damage assessment in its classic sense. But when you move very rapidly, like we did in this particular operation, it is difficult to keep up with it, no matter how many assets you have. And if you just revert back to counting things, then it even gets harder. What we are looking more for is the effect on the battlefield.
There are other pieces of battle damage assessment which we think are effects based and those are nonlethal. What are the effects of nonlethal actions that you take on the battlefield? For example, your psychological operations campaign—what you do with information operations; how do you assess those? Our current structure does not do that particularly well.
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Bob, do you want to add anything to that?
General CONE. I think that was, in fact, the problem that we saw: When you are attacking hundreds of targets, nearly 1,000 targets an evening, and then you are going to drive over that same piece of ground in the morning, when we are synchronizing fires with ground maneuver in a very effective way, what sort of system can give you feedback in that short period of time to inform the ground commanders. But I think they are very pleased with our ability to kill things. The key is giving information to people who need to have it so they can take more advantage in a way that is useful.
Dr. GINGREY. And I would think that is extremely important, because you do in one day, with rapidity, you do a great job; but if you cannot get that battle damage assessment just as quickly, it is continuing to lag behind, what do you do the next day? It seems to me it is critically important, and I am glad that you mentioned that. And as you assess this in hindsight, hopefully that battle damage assessment will be nearly as rapid as your ability to seek out and destroy.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. I might mention that there are some folks who actually were participating in this intelligence collection effort and the battle damage assessment effort. And the objectivity that a number of you have continued to refer to, this ruthless objectivity that you refer to, some of those folks weren't real happy when we talked about this particular issue, but from an operational warfighting perspective, the commanders—i.e. General Franks, his ground and air commanders—were not getting the type of effects assessments that they needed, and they weren't getting them as rapidly as they needed; which required them, for example, to have armed recon distance units in some cases to make sure they could keep up with the flow of forces, to stay up there, and in fact probe to find out what was still there.
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Dr. GINGREY. Right.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. So——
Dr. GINGREY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Meek.
Mr. MEEK. Thank you Mr. Chairman, and Admiral, General, thank you for being here.
I know before we went into Operation Iraqi Freedom that the Department of Defense recognized that we needed to do exactly what we are doing now, assessing lessons learned. And I heard you state earlier that you are really looking at what actually happens as relates to battle.
I know beforehand that part of the language was to capture all lessons learned at all levels of warfare as relates to the joint command, with gathered lessons of joint operation levels of the entire Department of Defense, lessons learned at the strategic level and collective joint staff, but I couldn't help but take a look at some of the mission you all had to carry out in over 400 focused interviews with key leaders and staff in various points of battle—in battle.
Now, I know that we have individuals who are in uniform and out of uniform, and how do we—are we looking at individuals who are actually in the Pentagon that are making some decisions; are you started at the joint command level only as relates to uniformed personnel?
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The reason why I am asking this question, we have many individuals that come before this committee, in uniform and out of uniform, from the Secretary of Defense to under secretaries, and we know that there was a great effort for swiftness and accuracy and quickness. For a minute there, I thought the news shows were really sitting in Central Command, ''The Race to Baghdad,'' you know, carrying on. The 503. We can talk about all of those things that are uncommon in warfare in past years, preemptive strikes, things of that nature.
How are you able to be critical, or not be critical but really define what went wrong from individuals who are not wearing uniforms that are making decisions as relates to how our military performed in Iraq, and the ground floor of this question goes to the Kevlar vests. We were told individuals who would be wearing hardened body armor. We knew we didn't have enough. We were told that all of the front line people will have that. Well, once we got into Baghdad, I do not think that was really taken into consideration, because we have individuals that are in the middle of urban warfare that do not have that body armor right now. So I know I am asking you—I am not asking you to make a career decision, I am just asking you to answer the question the way you can.
Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. True.
Mr. MEEK. Because I think you have a difficult task. And the general sitting next to you, I know the reason why he was reluctant in asking—answering questions, certain questions where maybe he did not have all the information, I think you were well within your right in doing so. But I think it is very, very important as we move forward, as administrations change, as philosophies change, that we can look back on this time and hopefully save lives in the future.
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Admiral GIAMBASTIANI. Thank you, Congressman Meek. If I could take your questions in a general sense first.
We look at lessons learned in a whole series of ways. I have been in the lessons learned business in a couple of other assignments, and my view is we didn't do it well, which is why we created this Joint Operational Lessons Learned Team. But we do just that. We look at the combatant commander-and-below operational level, so in general we formally interview and observe at the military operational level, just to get directly to your point.
My team does not come back to the Defense Department, for example, and interview people in the Defense Department or go over to the National Security Council or that. That is what we call a strategic level above us. And we focus on—the in-theater combatant level is where we are focusing the joint warfare-fighting piece. So there is a comment on how we do this, if you will, so we focus at the operational level.
The second thing is that to explain our process, we embedded General Cone and 30-plus other individuals throughout the entire Central Command so that they would have direct observation before, during, and just after major combat operation, so we could gain as much information as possible. And General Franks was spectacular in opening up everything to us in this sense. He just gave us free rein, and we sat in on everything he had with his commanders—and General Cone can talk about that in a second—so we do it by direct observation.
A second piece that we look at is, is we do it by analysis, okay?
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And, then, third, we do it b